When the Senate reconvenes after its recess, Verizon Business employees in New York and Massachusetts will be closely watching Senator Kennedy’s Employee Free Choice Act, a bill to prohibit private ballots for workers considering joining unions.

That’s because a majority of a group of skilled workers at Verizon Business, formerly MCI, have allegedly signed cards — a process known as “card check” — indicating that they wish to join the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Under federal law, which Mr. Kennedy proposes to change, the National Labor Relations Board generally requires workers to cast private ballots, not open cards, to determine their desire to join a union. If the majority votes for representation, then all the firm’s workers in the relevant unit are required to join and pay dues.

On March 1, the House passed the Employee Free Choice Act. If the Senate follows, then, after conference with the House, the bill will be sent to the president, who has said he would veto it.

The New York City comptroller, William Thompson Jr., together with two New York Democratic representatives, Jerrold Nadler and Anthony Weiner, has affirmed his support for the bill and called on Verizon’s chief executive officer, Ivan Seidenberg, to allow Verizon Business’s eligible work force to become unionized by card check.

But existing contracts between unions and sister company Verizon Telecom state that unionization of any workers employed by companies acquired by Verizon, such as Verizon Business, would be governed by private ballot elections. Mr. Seidenberg therefore relayed to the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers the decision of Verizon Business not to recognize the card check.

What is strange is that New York members of Congress are calling on Mr. Seidenberg to break legally binding contracts. In addition, Senator Kerry and Reps. Stephen Lynch and John Tierney, all Massachusetts Democrats, say they checked the count of the open voting cards of those union-targeted Verizon Business workers and that 57% voted for union representation.

But politicians have no way of knowing whether the cards are genuine, or how many workers are in these groups to calculate that percentage. They are simply grateful for labor’s help in regaining Congress, and willing to repay the debt by setting themselves up as verifiers of illegal elections.

If the two unions want to represent Verizon Business workers, they simply can ask the National Labor Relations Board to set up a private election. Last year 94% of all initial representation elections occurred within two months of the request.

But private elections pose a problem, say some union officials, politicians, and professors, because employers allegedly intimidate workers into voting against unionization. A professor of law at New York University Law School, Cynthia Estlund, testified last week before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, that “it is safe to say that thousands of employees have been fired in the last 10 years alone for their legally protected union organizing efforts.”

To the contrary, the former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, Peter Hurtgen, testifying at the same hearing, doubts that NLRB data exist to support Ms. Estlund’s claim. For decades, the NLRB has expeditiously resolved over 90% of its cases.

If workers are fired for organizing, the solution surely is not to remove their right to privacy, but to better enforce existing laws against employer harassment of workers. Employees can be intimidated by open voting, because fellow workers as well as union organizers know how people vote. In order to keep the peace, employees may feel compelled to skew their votes in favor of the union bosses.

Proponents of the Employee Free Choice Act say that employer intimidation has caused union membership to decline to only 7% of the private work force in 2006 from 24% in 1973. But this is unlikely, because unions won more private ballot elections in 2005 — 57% — than they won 30 years ago — 50%.

A more likely reason is that with increased government regulation of the workplace, the union function of protecting workers has withered. So workers conclude that the benefits of unionization don’t justify the costs of dues, which can be approximately 1.7% of wages, or $1,000 annually, for a worker earning $55,000. Further, with a low unemployment rate and a shortage of skilled workers, many firms are forced to treat employees fairly, or they will take their costly on-the-job training and accept higher-paying jobs elsewhere.

But unions are naturally concerned about the decline in membership, because they have bills to pay. In addition to the amounts spent on political activity, union officials command salaries that are high above average wages in many industries. In fact, the way to a high salary is not to become unionized, but to become a union official.

In 2006, the international president of the IBEW, Edwin Hill, received $339,099 in disbursements, and that union’s international secretary-treasurer, Jon Walters, received $317,574. Golf trips can add up too. In 2006, various branches of the IBEW listed spending on their LM-2 forms that totaled $53,030 for golf outings.

Employees of Verizon Business should be wary of Mr. Kennedy’s misnamed bill. It would strip them of the right to vote in private, and it might require them to join a union and start paying dues. As well as losing their fundamental right to privacy and being forced to join unions, they risk losing part of their paychecks to the pockets — and golf trips — of union officials.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.